


The Abbey Needs Followers

by horsyunicorn



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Dishonored 2 era I guess, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21893869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horsyunicorn/pseuds/horsyunicorn
Summary: A short thing which was inspired by a dream I had. Original Dishonored characters but not named. Look I don't know I just had to write this down.
Kudos: 1





	The Abbey Needs Followers

Background. – I am a younger brother to my elder sister, the second of the only two children of my mother, an heiress of one of Dunwall’s older families, and my father, a tailor by trade.

My family home was a medium-sized property remarkable less for its style and amenities and more for its size and grounds so close to the city. It was firstly surrounded by high metal fence with slim, close steel uprights painted black, punctuated by sturdy square slate grey posts. The footpath around the house was then bordered by neat conifers of uniform height. The house had a generous front garden laid out in square lines with precisely-clipped green shrubbery. The house itself was also constructed of slate grey stone with thin gold highlights.

_First visit_

I was studying natural philosophy at the Royal Academy. We, my fellow students and I, held a group study session in the library, studying the humours and structures of the human form. One of those annoying student politics groups had us all wearing bright green, an absurd colour for academical pursuit. We studied hard because our tutor had set us a quiz later in the week; but the group of us were confident we could pass the test with flying colours.

I was worried about Mother. She had provided us a good upbringing in a stable household, and we never wanted for food or shelter, but the last time I visited home, she had taken strongly to the Abbey’s Strictures, and had welcomed a fierce guardian into her home in order to ward off those who would defy the Abbey’s teachings.

_Second visit_

The second time I visited home, I met this guardian. It was a small bird – the size of a couch – with a ring that had the power to turn any living thing into dark grey stone. I did not know if the process was reversible, and hoped that the bird used the ring as a threat rather than a course of regular action.

_Third visit_

When I visited home again, the house and surrounds were eerily silent in the daylight. All the birds and beasts, small and large, around the estate, had been turned to dark grey stone. – Frozen, it seemed, in moments of terror or action. The neat green garden and well-kept conifers only underlined the horror of the frozen animals further. If only I knew of the terror I was about to experience.

*

I crept along the fence toward the front gate. With shock I saw that the bird guardian itself had been turned to stone somehow – its distinctive ring now immobilised around a feathered limb – its power perhaps now neutralized. I entered the estate.

There was an electrical oscillator control device attached to the water supply intake pipe. It was a small oblong mounted the intake pipe, and glowed on its upper surface with a beady red light. This was how the Abbey had been controlling my house and my mother! I unscrewed the device and put it in my pocket for later study. I made a mental note to update the water supply arrangement for our house, because it was clearly too accessible even for someone who could open the gate.

Instead of opening the front door I slid around the first two windows to the side and peered in. The sounds of an electrical transformer and an activated Arc Pylon assaulted my ears. Through a window with partial metal shutters, the Pylon sensed me, flashed and honked warningly but could not reach me, its electrical field blocked by the shutters.

My mother knew I was home. She shouted out to let me know I should enter.

I peered around the door. The Pylon flashed a bit; my mother laughed as she saw me duck away. She relented and switched it off.

I walked up to her. Nothing had changed: she yet had long hair framing a high forehead, a broad frame and expensive but restrained dark silver jewellery.

My adoptive father, a tall thin wretch of a man, appeared briefly to welcome me home, but he cowered immediately at my mother’s yelled instructions to sit down.

The Pylon was sitting in pride of place at the centre of the sitting room. To one side, the corridor to the kitchens; to the other, the door to the bedrooms. It occupied the best place to protect the interior of the house from intruders. Mother had neatly installed (or had it installed) the generator in the service room immediately behind it. The tables in front of it were littered with spare parts and packaging.

With the Pylon powered down, I resolved at least to re-program it to accept my electrical presence so I would not be fried to ash, ending my academical career like an errant rat.

I twisted a few dials on the control panel with my wrench, priming the Pylon for accepting electrical field imprints via charger.

We leaned in to touch the charger, moving our fingers up and down the electrostatic combs (dark brown in the shiny brass case) in order to ensure good contact. I ran my finger up and down rigorously with good verticality; my mother held her hand proudly up to it; my father hesistantly contacted it via one fingertip.

The Pylon honked its start-up sequence and crackled on. I just then realized it was not a standard model but the new automated design – one that could walk up and down a corridor to defeat well-prepared intruders! Its jointed activated and a “face” poked out of its upper body with instruments able to recognise basic facial structures in addition to the electrical signature of the body.

I ducked and rolled under a table, hoping the metal parts on the table would confuse its electrical sensors for a moment. I knew in some sensible part of my mind that theoretically there was nothing to fear, but it is difficult to tell oneself that when pursued by a walking automaton that can fry you into leftovers if it does not like your face.

I saw that, despite its mobility, the Pylon still needed to be attached to its generator by thick, heavy cables, so it could be outwitted still by mobility. I saw it walk up to my mother, acknowledge her electrical field signature and face, and being turning to me.

It was at that moment, my real father burst into the room. A yet-pry man of sixty with a Gristolean complexion but Wei Ghon features, he ran toward me with great urgency. I backed away, having not seen him in years. Immediately I shouted at him to RUN because his electrical field was not programmed into the Pylon.

*

In reflection, I think the appearance of my biological father spurred my mother into action, renouncing the Strictures and removing the Pylon from her home. Perhaps it was her fear of harming a Gentleman outside her family; or perhaps the fear of gossip that would follow her if she allowed someone to be harmed in her own home. Nevertheless I am glad that my father appeared when he did.


End file.
